Determinants of low birth weight among newborns delivered in public health facilities of dessie town, northeast Ethiopia: a case control study

Abstract

Background: Low birth weight (LBW) remains the single most important risk factor which attributed to mortality of 15% -20% of newborns across the globe. Most of the lifecycle cycles of nutritional outcomes are deeply rooted in birth weight. An infant with low birth weight is more likely to have stunting in childhood and develop markers of metabolic risk factors at his later age. Furthermore, LBW is a risk for intergenerational assaults of malnutrition as it is the risk for sub optimal growth till adulthood, affecting women‟s reproductive capabilities. Thus, there is enough concern to study the determinants of LBW across setting. Accordingly, this study was conducted to assess the determinants of low birth weights in Dessie Town, Northeast Ethiopia. Methods: A facility based unmatched Case Control study was employed from February to April 2017. The data were collected using structured, pretested interviewer administered questionnaire in all public health facilities of Dessie Town. Consecutive live births of less than 2500 grams in each of hospitals and the health centers were selected as cases and succeeding normal weight babies as controls. Data were entered in to Epi-data software version 3.1 and exported to SPSS Version 21 and analyzed using frequency, crosstabs and percentage. Factors with p-value <0.25 in Bivariate analysis were entered to multivariable logistic regression and statistical significance were considered at p-value <0.05. Results: The mean ± sd of birth weight was 2138.28gm ± 206.87 for cases and 3145.16gm ± 414.99 for controls. After using multivariate logistic regression analysis, iron and folate supplementation during pregnancy (AOR=2.84(95%CI: 1.15,7.03)), mothers who did not receive nutritional counseling during the current pregnancy (AOR = 4.05 (95%CI: 1.95, 8.38)), mothers who did not take additional meal (AOR=3.25(95%CI: 1.64, 6.44)), undernourished mothers (AOR =5.62(95%CI: 2.64,11.97)), anemic mothers (AOR= 3.54 (95%CI: 1.46,8.61)) and inadequate MDD-W (AOR=6.65(95%CI: 2.31, 19.16))were found as a risk factor associated for low birth weight. Conclusion and recommendations: Lack of nutrition counseling at ANC, lack of iron and folate supplementation during pregnancy , mothers not receive additional food during pregnancy, maternal under nutrition, maternal anemia and inadequate M-WDDS were significant determinants of LBW. The importance of nutritional counseling and iron and folate supplementation during pregnancy, malnutrition screening and proper identification of high riskmother needs to be strengthened effort to reduce incidence of LBW infants. In addition, behavioral change communications targeting pregnant women in improving women dietary diversity needs to be enhanced by health extension workers and health professionals in each health facility working at ANC clinic